Simone’s Message By Simone Cooke, Principalthem in books or researching on a computer. Joyful...
Transcript of Simone’s Message By Simone Cooke, Principalthem in books or researching on a computer. Joyful...
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Simone’s Message By Simone Cooke, Principal
“Do Nothing Without Joy” Louis Malaguzzi
A literal buzz of excitement abounded in our classrooms this week as our two year olds ran from
room to room expressing their absolute joy at sampling the fresh honey straight from the hive
and delighting in inspecting the Queen Bee and hearing all about the process of pollination!
There is nothing like hands on, concrete learning to teach new concepts and incite excitement
and joy in learning!
Hands on discovery and active participation is how young children learn best. As you read
through our newsletter you will see the many rich sensory activities our teachers set up each
day to engage the children‟s curiosity and discover the world around them. Cooked spaghetti
play, kinetic sand, dinosaur digs and worm farms all engage the senses and help children to
absorb and consolidate new concepts and ideas far more effectively than just reading about
them in books or researching on a computer.
Joyful engagement in learning promotes a positive attitude towards school from an early age.
Harnessing the natural wonder and curiosity of young children is critical as the attitudes children
gain in their early years has a deep and lasting effects on the mind set which they develop
towards lifelong learning.
Here at Reddam we take seriously our role to educate and inspire the „whole‟ child in mind,
body and soul. Providing children with choices over their learning, offering a range of
inspirational learning activities and providing an inviting and joyful space in which to learn is
part of this process. Watching our children one minute racing around the room in a state of
heightened excitement from their bee experience to the next minute sitting so quietly focused
on their yoga and „mindfulness‟ truly highlights the versatility of young children and highlights
the value of providing a range of joyful opportunities from which they can live, laugh and learn!
31ST MARCH 2017
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This week The Nest and Hatchlings were involved in a new painting technique: Tie-dye art!
We recently discovered that baby wipes can be a great resource for art! This week we used
them to make some super easy tie dye art . No need to worry about stains and permanently
dyed finger, everything is completely washable!
To do this artwork we needed to pinch the centre of the baby wipe, hold and twist. We carefully
attached a few rubber bands and used dye watercolours to colour the sections of the baby
wipe. The more we painted into the folds, the more vibrant the colours were. When the
children were done choosing colours and painting the wipes we removed the rubber bands
and gently unfolded the baby wipe and laid on top of two pieces of paper towel until it was
completely dried.
We had a lot of fun making this art work which is now displayed on our documentation wall!
Sensory Tubs
Sensory Tubs are tons of fun. For this weeks tub we decided to use edible ingredients as we are
also talking about the sense of taste. On the first day we played with seeds and farm animals
where the children pretended to be on a farm, feeding the animals and also feeling the texture
of the seeds run through their fingers. On another day we played with coloured spaghetti, we
added a few utensils so the children could pretend they were cooking and this activity kept our
babies more than entertained.
There were hours of learning, exploring, and fun. Children learn best by having "hands on"
experiences with materials, rich sensory experiences are vital to young children's learning.
Stage 1: The Nest & Hatchlings By Gabriela Guimaraes
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Stage 1: The Nest & Hatchlings Sensory Tubs
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Stage 1: The Nest & Hatchlings Tie-Dye Art
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Stage 1: The Nest & Hatchlings Coloured Spaghetti Sensory Tubs
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Stage 1: The Nest & Hatchlings Coloured Spaghetti Sensory Tubs
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Stage 1: The Nest & Hatchlings Outdoor Play
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Stage 1: The Nest & Hatchlings Our Day
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As I have already mentioned, in the past few weeks I have been surprised by the
wonderful group engagement taking place during group time and the exploring evident
in our learning stations. Learning stations are structured in order to expose children to
different experiences. Watching the children I have learnt as an Educator that children
absorb more information when exposed to a select few quality activities, supported
by intentional teaching and above of all designed to respect a child‟s individuality.
As the end of Term 1 is approaching and our fun vacation program is about to start, I
have been reflecting about our group interactions. It is clear to see how confident and
comfortable the children are around each other, building strong bonds and feelings. We
are one small family, where we learn from each other and most of all we are
comfortable around each other.
Proceeding with our sensory table activities we have introduced the farm animals and a
new and intriguing material called moon sand. Moon sand is a great sensory material
and can be moulded and shaped as desired. And it is also easy to make! Just mix 8 cups
of flour and 1 cup of baby oil. It was amazing to see the children sitting around the
table, making animal prints and feeling the sand through their little fingers.
This simple yet effective sensory activity supports the children‟s creativity, imagination,
fine motor skills and language development. While exploring this activity they would sing
“Old MacDonald”, make the farm animal sounds, smell the sand and create animal
prints.
“Materials enhance learning when they reflect what is natural and familiar and also
introduce novelty to provoke interest and more complex and increasingly abstract
thinking.”
EYLF
Stage 1: Fledglings By Michele Santos
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Stage 1: Fledglings Sensory Table
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Stage 1: Fledglings Sensory Table
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Stage 1: Fledglings Our Day
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Stage 2: Chicks, Sparrows & Robins By Kasia Rymarczyk
Sometimes, in responding to children‟s interests, ideas and questions, we may not be sure in what
direction the learning will go. From an initial idea, learning can travel in so many directions,
gathering its own momentum as it continues. For children, such open-ended learning is important
because of the way it affirms and values their ideas and choices. It is an exciting way to enrich
and inspire children‟s learning and involvement.
Within our Mini Beasts project it may seem that we are jumping from one insect to another,
however there is something more complex in this exploration, something that connects all the
elements together. This connection is something that the children have discovered for themselves
as they realized that all the fabulous insects are busy working all the time in a complex
ecosystem! The ants are working non-stop building and extending on their colony. Earthworms
are digging, improving properties of the soil which in turn helps the plants to grow. Crickets are
singing all night long and the caterpillars are munching on leaves all day but eventually turn into
beautiful butterflies. Bees help flowers to grow and produce delicious honey. For several weeks
the children had been interested in the works of insects, the project has evolved towards
exploring how the insects work in the garden and discovering how really these mini creatures
help our plants to grow. Very exciting!
A warm welcome to our two new Stage 2 classroom members, Caleb and Kai. We wish both
the boys and their families many wonderful moments and memories here at Reddam. This week
was also filled with birthday celebrations, Happy Birthday to Aubrey and Mason!
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Stage 2: Making Honey By Kasia Rymarczyk
This week we transformed our Provocation area into an interest area that focuses on the
work of bees.
The children have been particularly interested in how the bees are making
honey. During group discussion we have discovered that many of our children often
have honey for breakfast or as a treat. But where does the honey comes from? and how
is it made? this was the main enquiry coming from the children.
We used technology to watch a video of bees in action where the children could see in
time lapse every detail of bees at work, from collection of pollen to nectar to the
dropping the honey into the beeswax comb.
To extend on the children‟s learning we have added real life resources where children
had an opportunity to observe real honey bees (including the queen and the workers).
They could touch, smell and taste freshly produced organic honey and view large
honeycomb in the special beekeepers frame. By this complex and diverse investigation,
we can now confidently say that we may have some honey production experts in our
class!
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Stage 2: Making Honey
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Stage 2: Cross Pollination By Holly Lindsay
This week bumble bees have been an area of interest for the children, this developed
from our focus on Mini Beasts. The children have led this extension and have been asking
some interesting questions on 'why?' and 'how?' bees and flowers work together.
We kicked off this exploration with a bumble bee inspired fine motor experience. This
activity was a great way to explain cross pollination to the children.
We started off by creating bumble bee pegs (made from yellow and brown pipe
cleaners). Four coloured place mats were placed around the table with a selection of
'nectar' in the centre of the table. Using the bee pegs the children matched the nectar
with the correct colour.
As well as setting an example of cross pollination this encouraged colour recognition and
strengthened fine motor skills, which links to developing a healthy pincer grip.
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Stage 2: Cross Pollination
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Stage 2: Coloured Cabbage in the Garden By Eva Lo
Last week we talked about how Earthworms benefit our garden , they help to increase
the quality of soil and nutrition for the plants and flowers to grow. After exploring the
earthworms we let the children put all the worms back to our garden and we decided to
try a fun plant water absorption experiment with white cabbage.
From this experimentation the children are learning how plants absorb water and how
they draw nutrients up through their stems, demonstrated in a very simple, straightforward
and colourful way. This engaging experiment provided the children with a better
understanding of how nature works. During group time the children took turns tasting,
smelling and touching the cabbage leaves. Then we introduced how these cabbage
leaves drink up the colourful water by giving the children a chance to mix the colour
powder and put the leaves in the solution. After 10-15 mins, we can see the coloured
water already travelling up to the cabbage leaves from the bottom. For an extention
activity, we went outside to the garden to gather some soil to create our healthy soil
painting on the paper.
We would love to hear of any interest, experience or knowledge your family has in this
area, and combine it into our program. We value family input so something as simple as
a relevant book or activity would be greatly appreciated.
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Stage 2: Coloured Cabbage
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DINOSAUR PROVOCATION
Cave Paintings
As an extension to our Dinosaur Provocation the Kookaburra‟s decided to create some
cave paintings. We first looked at the cave paintings on the ipad and decided we
could do that too. White paint on black cardboard made for the most effective
replicas , we decided that using thin brushes with white paint contrasts well together
and we could get some great thin brush strokes. Fine motor skills came into good use as
we concentrated on our paintbrush grips as we manipulated the brush to make these
strokes. The children enjoyed describing their cave paintings to the rest of the class.
Dinosaur Shadow Tracing
We are all interested in shadows and dinosaurs and by accident, we discovered a way
to project the dinosaurs onto the wall. Even though the dinosaurs were small, when
projected onto the wall we were surprised at how large the dinosaur shape would
become . We discovered that if we shortened or lengthened the distance the table sat
from the light that our Dinosaurs grew or diminished in size. Carefully tracing around the
dinosaur shape, we explored a new way to draw dinosaurs onto the paper which was
stuck to the wall. It was a little bit tricky as our own shadows kept getting in the way
and some of us nearly traced ourselves by mistake!
Planting Seeds
When looking at the what Dinosaurs eat we had an interesting discussion about seeds
and growing plants. Some of the children were aware that we needed water and sun
to make the seeds grow! All the group watched with interest as the teacher showed
them how to plant seeds in the soil. "Look at the seeds and how small they are," said
the teacher. The children all had a closer look and picked one up for inspection. We
then took turns to plant the seeds in the soil using the small spades to dig holes first
before putting the seeds in the pots. We are going to visit the seed pots every few days
to see if they have grown. Hopefully we will have some lovely flowers soon!
Stage 3 - Kookaburras By Riina Andrew
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Stage 3: Kookaburras Dinosaur Tracing
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Stage 3: Kookaburras Planting Seeds
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Stage 3: Kookaburras Cave Paintings
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DINOSAUR PROVOCATION
This week the Flamingos have been continuing to learn more about Dinosaurs and the
prehistoric world.
Simon planned a really fun dinosaur bone digging activity for us in the sandpit. All the
children went on an adventure around the school searching for dinosaur bones in a bus
made out of cardboard boxes. Once we had made it to the sandpit we all got out of
the bus and used the spades to dig in the sand and find the bones that had been
buried. The children had a wonderful time on their dinosaur adventure and were
wonderful friends as they worked together co operatively to find the bones.
Later in the week we continued studying bones and used some pictures of dinosaur
skeletons to study and then replicate. The children used black cardboard and white
cotton tips to recreate the dinosaur skeleton of their choice. This activity challenged the
children's fine motor development as they held the small cotton bud, put glue on either
end and then placed it on the paper.
Learning Outcome 4.2 Children develop a range of skills and processes such as problem
solving, inquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching and investigating.
Learning Outcome 4.4 Children resource their own learning through connecting with
people, place, technologies and natural and processed materials.
Stage 3 - Flamingos By Amanda McDonald
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Stage 3: Flamingos Dinosaur Dig
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Stage 4 - Rosellas By Sue Mayer
How do snakes move?
Jasper, Layla and Audrey K have been fascinated by reptiles, particularly snakes. These fasci-
nating creatures have captured our imaginations and wonder especially how they move.
Asking the question "I wonder how snakes move?" Created a wonderful conversation where
the children expressed their own theories of how effortlessly snakes slide or slither across the
ground.
Layla: " They have little legs that they hide underneath them because they don't want anyone
to see them
Audrey K: "I thought that snakes just have tummies and they slither and they have little toes or
something that help them stand up"
Sarah: "They don't want people stepping on them so they hide"
Jean: "But when the snakes go out from their house they go quite slowly and when the people
see them they don't step on them
Sarah: "When the snakes get out of their home they slither away but then a car comes they
crash into a car and the the car will drive them back to their home"
Derin: "When snakes get out they move"
Snakes don't usually go near cars though
Audrey K: "They live in the jungle"
Sarah: "They live under a rock"
Audrey K: "Or they could be sea snakes and live in the water"
Jean: "When the snakes go into their car then the people can get out of the car and see
snakes crow"
Sarah: " Crawl"
Jean: "Yep, crawl"
When children are respected and valued as competent and capable they have so much
knowledge to share. Exploring this interest further the children wanted to make their own
snakes. Practicing a concertina fold (which is a complex fold to master) to make their snakes
we made a motion that a snake uses to move pushing themselves forward and then bringing
their body towards that forward motion. Exploring their movement further we looked at how
snakes push off objects to get their momentum and found out that the scales under their belly
open and trap dirt to push them forwards. Trying to make the concertina fold took a lot of per-
severance and practice but once mastered there was no stopping the children wanting to do
more.
If any dads have any old ties that are no longer in fashion we would love to have them to sew
and create a snake door stop ready for winter.
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Stage 4: Rosellas How Do Snakes Move?
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Stage 4: Cockatoos By Bernadette Casey
We delved a little deeper into why we wear masks – to hide who we are or to pretend to be
something else. To complete our investigation on masks and to link to the types of literacy the
children have been exposed to recently, we created super hero profiles. The children have
been using profiles to learn about dinosaurs where print and images are used to portray infor-
mation. This week the children created their own. The children were required to come up with
their own ideas about their superhero names and powers. Some children were able to write
the letters as I verbally spelt them out, others were able to copy the letters and some are work-
ing towards recognising letters. The children are at the stage where they should be beginning
to recognise their written names, write them and beginning to form the shapes of other letters
not in their names.
Furthermore we have been continuing to practice our foundation handwriting. This has been a
big interest of the children, they love learning about things that they will be able to use in „big
school‟ if you would like to help your child with these skills at home there are several ways you
can do so –
Encourage them to use their dominant hand when writing or using tools/utensils.
Some of us are finding writing challenging because we need to develop our fine motor
skills – some play dough fun, building sand castles, trying to put on our own shoes, carry-
ing a light grocery bag – anything that involves gripping or grabbing – can help to devel-
op these muscles so children can hold the pencil correctly, with strength to write.
Finding, recognising and differentiating between numbers and letters in your own envi-
ronment (what number bus do you catch? What is one your number plate? What house
or apartment number do you live in?)
Encouraging your child to write and recognise their name in fun ways – in the sandpit or
the beach, on a fogged up bus window
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Stage 4: Cockatoos Masks
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Music By Justin Sze
Stage 1:
Our little ones had fun shaking the egg shakers and stopping. The action of stopping
and deliberately keeping silent is very challenging and amusing for the children. This
skill is called the “inhibitory control” and it teaches children to be disciplined through a
fun activity. Another very interesting activity was “Monkey See, Monkey Do”. In this
song, we imitated the actions of the children and included them as the lyrics of the
song. Such imitation helped children tremendously in their Social & Emotional develop-
ment as they learn that their actions are accepted in our class.
Stage 2:
These children took the “Monkey See, Monkey Do” song to the next level... literally.
While the Stage 1 children had limited movements, these little ones could dance, jump,
clap, twist and much more. They also listened and imitated the sounds of the monkey.
It was so funny to watch them! At this stage, they are learning that sometimes, they are
the leaders, i.e. everyone followed their actions/suggestions, at other times, they need
to follow the suggestions of their friends. Once again, there was good social emotional
development going on during this segment of the lesson.
Stage 3
We visited our imaginary musical beach once again. This time, we built a boat! As we
built it, we sang a sea shanty song. Once we had the boat, we pretended to be a pi-
rate and went, “Ah-ha!!” Of course, we had another song to go along with it. But as we
sailed in our big blue boat, we saw a ship with a very loud horn. To simulate the sound
of the horn of the ship, Justin brought a “sho-fa” and blew it. Fortunately, we managed
to steer clear of the big ship. Then, “Merrily We Rolled Along” till we reached the
beach. Once we were at the shore, we got out our beach ball and had a ball of a
time, rolling the ball to one another.
Stage 4
We continue to develop the ability of keeping the steady beat and using the singing
voice in this week‟s lesson. This time, we kept the beat with our feet and stepped to the
following rhythm “I I I Z” as they walked through a forest. At the end of the song, the
sleeping bear awoke and gave everyone a scare. We practiced our singing voices
with the song “Tideo”. The song “Tideo” is specially selected because the melodic pat-
terns consist of predominantly the “minor third”. This is the most singable interval for chil-
dren. I would like to take this opportunity to explain that there are lots of “children mu-
sic” out there. Most of such music are for the purpose of entertaining children but our
selection of songs is primarily for educating children. This rationale was of course not ex-
plained to the children in class. We just simply had lots of fun, singing and making music
together!
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Mandarin Class By Sherry Zhu
Since the second week of our lessons, we have been learning the song “Two Tigers”. Af-
ter several weeks listening to the song and using hand movements, most of students
have grasped the rhythm of the song and some students have remembered the lyrics.
Last week, we made a family tree after we learned the main family members and
watched the episode “The Grandpa‟s Little Train” from Peppa Pig. This activity aims to
encourage children to recognize their achievements. The sense of success can help
them build or strengthen their confidence.
The children are becoming more confident in saying the words „red‟, „blue‟, „mother‟,
„father‟, „grandpa‟, „grandma‟ and „dog‟ in Chinese. This week we will start to learn
numbers in Chinese through the use of games to assist the children in memorizing the
words.
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Yoga By Kelly Nance
Continuing their adventures into the garden, the children revised mini beast yoga this
week. Each week more children deepen their level of engagement, becoming increas-
ingly settled as they broaden their smiles and stretches.
Stage 1 and 2 took part in a game called, “Yogi says,” selecting a random mini beast
from a card while stage 3 and 4 took a numbered card out of the golden honeycomb,
matching the number to that of a leaf in the middle of the yoga circle, turning it over to
reveal the mini beast pose.
Next week, as it is the final week of term, the children will have a chance to tailor their
yoga lesson within each group, selecting their yoga experiences from those we have
done in the last 6 weeks as a way of consolidating and revisiting what they have
learned.
Love and Peace,
Kelly
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Dance By Tess Spiedel-Connolly
THE VALUE OF DANCE
Becoming a skilled dancer takes discipline, focus and perseverance, skills that children
learning dance can use in all aspects of their lives. Providing children with the opportuni-
ty to dance helps to spark their creativity and develop an appreciation for the arts.
As children learn and adjust to the different movements and postures they need to
dance they begin to develop a greater sense of their bodies. Their confidence and self
esteem grows as they become more capable at tackling difficult poses and steps.
Dance fosters a more positive attitude to learning and allows children to explore their
own self expression. Above all else dancing frees the spirit, is joyful and fun!